"A Real Poet."

by
James
Weldon
Johnson

For years the great poet has been regarded as the highest
manifestation of the intellectual, esthetic, and in many cases spiritual,
powers of a race. In the names that have come down through
history it is those of the great poets that blaze out brightest. It
is chiefly upon the achievements of such poets that races and
peoples claim greatness for themselves.

There are, of course, four names which in their influence
and appeal stand on a level with or even above the greatest poets.
They are Buddha, Confucius, Christ and Mohammed. But these
four great religious teachers were after all great ethical poets.
Judged in every light they do represent the highest peaks of the
genius of the races that produced them. But these names are
limited to oriental races. No occidental race has yet produced
a great religious teacher. Among the occidental peoples the great
poet still stands almost unrivaled. There are other lists, of course,
that contain names of wide influence and appeal. For example,
that soldiers' list can show Alexander, Cæsar and Napoleon. But
there is not an occidental people in which the final test would not
put its greatest poet above its greatest soldier.

The times are slightly changed and the glamour about the
poet may be somewhat dimmed. We are living in a very material
age, and the man of science, the man who is able to bend
the forces of nature to the well being of humanity is coming into
ascendancy. There may come a time when from achievements
in science there will spring names that will shed a luster as bright
and enduring as the names of Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Moliere
and Goethe.

However, to my mind, this is improbable. The materialism
of the present age may be but a transitory state. Moreover, although
the scientist may contribute what in the utilitarian sense
is far more important to humanity, he can never take hold of the
imaginations of men and stir their souls like the poet. It therefore
seems that as long as man loves the beautiful the great poet
will hold his supreme place.

I have indulged in this rather weighty sounding introduction
simply to induce a train of thought. I wish my readers to think
of the production of poets by a race as a vital thing. It is vital
not only as an indication of the development of the race but it is
vital as to the place and recognition which that race is given
by the world at large.

In accordance with the temper of the age, and more particularly,
in accordance with false ideas with which the mind of
the Negro in American has been impregnated, we Aframericans
are prone to think of one of our number who conducts a successful
corner grocery store as being far more vital and important as a
factor in our progress than one who turns out a sheaf of poems,
even though the poems are real poetry. We are prone to think of
the grocer as one who is laying foundations[SIC] stones in our racial
greatness and of the poet as doing little more than wasting his
time.

Without disparaging the successful grocer, I must say that
this evaluation is all wrong. It would be interesting, if it were
possible, to calculate how many successful Negro grocers it would
take to equal the force of Paul Laurence Dunbar as a factor in
the progress of the race and in having the progress recognized by
the world. I am now driving at the truth contained in the words
of Jesus Christ when He said, "Man shall not live by bread alone."
If the race would develop its greatness and highest possibilities
it needs not only to support its grocers but also to appreciate
its poets.

All this is merely introductory to a few words to call attention
to a Negro poet who has risen like a new and flaming
star on the horizon. The poet is Claude McKay.

Mr. McKay deserves a full and prompt appreciation. We
should not do in his case what we're guilty of in the case of
Dunbar, that was, not to recognize or not even to know his greatness
until it was acclaimed by the whites.

Mr. McKay is a real poet and a great poet. I mean by this
that he has both the poetic endowment and the ability to make
that endowment articulate, and he is yet far from his full growth.
He is still a young man. He is a poet of beauty and a poet of
power. No Negro poet has sung more beautifully of his own race
than McKay and no Negro poet has equalled the power with which
he expresses the bitterness that so often rises in the heart of the
race. As an example of that power we quote his sonnet, "If We
Must Die," written after the terrible riots in the summer of 1919:
If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock at our accursed lot.If we must die, O let us nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be shedIn vain: then even the monsters we defyShall be constrained to honor us though dead!O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us brace,And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!What though before us lies the open grave?Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
[source]

The race ought to be proud of a poet capable of voicing it so
fully. Such a voice is not found every day.

Mr. McKay's volume, "Harlem Shadows," published by Harcourt,
Brace & Company, New York, is already attracting the
attention of the critics of the country. What he has achieved
in this little volume sheds honor upon the whole race.

Citation

Johnson,
James Weldon.
"A Real Poet."
The New York Age: The National Negro Weekly
(May 20, 1922).